Testimonials

What people are saying about my workshops and materials-

“Linz Craig is an exceptional and outstanding individual who is passionate about education and technology.”

-Solomon King Benge, Founder of Fundi Bots

“…all the teachers present deemed him a ‘master teacher.'”

– Erik Specking, University of Arkansas, College of Engineering

“Linz is a skilled, highly creative person who has an eye for what will and will not work in a classroom setting. His teaching style and class material set a high level of quality for what would become the department of education in 2011.”

“Core literacies including interactive engagement with technology, collaboration, and team problem solving were skillfully woven into their lesson….”

– Chad M. Clark, New Media Librarian, Highland Park Public Library

“…helped show my students the close relationship between creativity, electronics, and computer programming….”

– Daniel Blake, Teacher, Southwest Virginia Governor’s School, VA

“He helped significantly increase the knowledge and skills of our in-house team to a level that we would not have been able to achieve on our own.”

-Solomon King Benge, Founder of Fundi Bots

“Linz has an extensive history of workshops and events at educational institutes (e.g., New York University, Tufts University, University of Colorado, Colorado State University, M.I.T., Tufts University, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Stetson University, University of Arkansas, East Carolina University, University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College) as well as K­12 schools and informal learning centers such as libraries and museums (e.g., Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Science Museum Oklahoma Network, Arkansas Museum of Discovery, Science Museum of Minnesota, Union Station Science City, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art).”

Full Testimonials-

“Linz Craig is an exception and outstanding individual who is passionate about education and technology. I’ve worked with Linz in various capacities since 2011, the most important of which was the fact that he was responsible for our very first donation (through SparkFun Electronics) as an organization.

He also helped make connections for us by promoting Fundi Bots through his blog posts for various online journals and made some very high level connections to donors and partners. Connections that have helped us get where we are today.

Over the past 3 years, Linz has travelled to Uganda (in Africa) to teach in two 2-week long robotics camps, train students in various high-schools for one-day workshops and helped us make our first outreach to Rwanda.

In August 2014, Linz joined Fundi Bots for a 4 month volunteer/consultancy. During that time, Linz was instrumental in setting up the very first Fundi Space, and taught more than 30 workshops to the public and to our team. He helped significantly increase the knowledge and skills of our in-house team to a level that we would not have been able to achieve on our own.

During this time, he taught professional product development, programming for embedded electronics and graphical user interfaces in C++ and JAVA, interfacing those UIs with hardware through Arduino and Processing. He also introduced us to and taught us wireless communication, more specifically, XBee and Bluetooth.

Most importantly, Linz introduced us to the Othermill, a great prototype development tool that helped us mill our very first Fundi Bots printed circuit boards. Because of this production process, Linz also extended our team’s skills by introducing us to circuit design and advanced electronics troubleshooting and repair.

Working with Linz, we’ve escalated our product development goals and rapidly developed prototypes for farm automation and the entertainment industry. These prototypes are part of our self-sustainability model and will be eventually produced for market.

Finally, because of his strong background in technology training, Linz Craig has been extremely helpful in the development of our curriculum which we plan to be used across all our robotics clubs in each school and country we’re a part of. Along with the curriculum development, he has improved our teacher’s skills and training process which has led to significant improvement in the way our students understand the material.

I cannot speak highly enough of Linz Craig. He is a mentor, a friend, an advisor and will always be an outstanding and passionate Fundi, which is the highest professional respect I can pay him.”

-Solomon King Benge, Founder, Fundi Bots

“All 40 participants, including fourth-graders to adults, were blown away! I had lots of thank-yous from everyone, as well as from parents whose child attended. Linz was amazing and all the teachers present deemed him a ‘master teacher.'”

– Erik Specking, University of Arkansas, College of Engineering

“I wanted to take a few minutes to thank you for my experience at the workshop. For the past several months I have attempted to learn more about the maker movement and coding in general. The day at Union Station was a perfect opportunity for me to learn more about what I think is a key component to the future of education.

“The pace of the workshop was outstanding. Your analogies and examples helped clarify some topics that were difficult for me to grasp. It was obvious that you have teaching experience and used a variety of ways to explain these concepts. I enjoyed working through several of the circuits and the challenge of changing and modifying the code.”

“The instructor Linz Craig was a great presenter. His assistants, Nick, Bobby and Eli were very helpful and knowledgeable. We each received a SparkFun Inventor’s Kit for our Introduction to Arduino for free; it doesn’t get any better than this.”

– Anonymous

“Linz and the SparkFun troupe rocked our library! Their instructional approach met the specific needs of every one of our participants. Core literacies including interactive engagement with technology, collaboration, and team problem solving were skillfully woven into their lesson and cleverly dressed in the guises of sprites, circuit boards, and break dancing. Well done SparkFun!”

– Chad M. Clark, New Media Librarian, Highland Park Public Library

“This opportunity helped show my students the close relationship between creativity, electronics, and computer programming… Since the SparkFun workshop, six participants from my school are now enthusiastically pursuing independent projects with Arduinos to develop new tools for everyday lives… The SparkFun National Tour inspired students to go on to create devices, collect data, and utilize the tinkering skills they learned to participate in investigations and innovative projects to reveal new findings and opportunities in our world.”

– Daniel Blake, Teacher, Southwest Virginia Governor’s School, VA

“I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for thinking of my kids when the SparkFun program was introduced. They came home raving about their time and how fun it all was. They have logged onto the mit.edu website and have downloaded the recommended Scratch program. Both kids have not stopped creating characters and slide shows since last night! When Isabel arrived home yesterday, she asked when the next class was. There was true disappointment on her face when I responded that this was the one and only class. This is an amazing program and it has truly inspired my children. It has fostered a level of creativity I have not seen in a while. So again, many thanks from my family to you for bringing SparkFun to Lawton. All the best.”

– Joanne Celedon, Parent, Lawton, OK

“After participating in SparkFun’s workshop, I plan to conduct a STEM summer camp for all of our incoming freshman.”

– David Flores, Chandler Unified School District

“The workshop held in Wisconsin Rapids as part of SparkFun’s National Tour was awesome. It was great curriculum, SparkFun sent a great team, and the students had a great time. The SparkFun crew was knowledgeable and professional and made the class very enjoyable. At the end of the day we had to practically drag our high school students out of the classroom. I am still getting email from students wanting to know “when we’re doing it again. In Wisconsin Rapids, a Spark has been lit and the students are having Fun!“

– Mark Swanson, President, Swanson Labs LLC, Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Other workshop attendees said-

“I thought it was a great class and helped me learn about the lilypad and expand my knowledge of electronics, but it failed to cover transistors (which I don’t understand) and the types of variables in arduino.”

“Keeping 4th and 5th graders attention focused for an entire school day is not an easy task at all, yet no problems for the SparkFun event.”

“I learned SO much, and I have never had this much fun in a library training session, EVER.”

“With the knowledge I gained in the class I’m now much more likely to take on projects requiring microcontrollers.”

“Lots of things I think would be really cool to have are not sold in stores or manufactured professionally so I want to try to develop my own products for myself.”

“The presenter made it possible for all students (myself included) to learn about electronics. I want to get a kit and do more. ALL YOUR STAFF WAS EXCELLENT— KUDOS TO ALL”

“The kit and the instruction and the resource list gave me lots of information to start. And I’m pretty motivated. Thank you for a fun and useful workshop.”

“I work at a science and technology center, so having introduction/working knowledge of this kind of content is important. We need to be able to make visitors aware of this kind of software and hardware.”

“I have already been working on some of my own do-it-yourself projects, but this class swayed the direction of my thinking of future projects. I have been doing more mechanical/physical projects but this opened me to electronics. I have an Arduino but I have been able to do with it more in the last two days after the class than I could for the weeks before.”

A longer, more personal email from one attendee-

“Dear Lindsay,

“My name is Eric Langhorst. I teach American history, broadcasting and technology at Discovery Middle School in Liberty, Missouri. I was a participant at your educational tour stop in Kansas City at Union Station – November 7, 2013.

“I wanted to take a few minutes to thank you for my experience at the workshop. For the past several months I have attempted to learn more about the maker movement and coding in general. The day at Union Station was a perfect opportunity for me to learn more about what I think is a key component to the future of education.

“The pace of the workshop was outstanding. Your analogies and examples helped clarify some topics that were difficult for me to grasp. It was obvious that you have teaching experience and used a variety of ways to explain these concepts. It was a relief for me to know that I would have time throughout the day to build, play and explore the kit. Often the professional development that teachers receive is a “sit and get” and the teacher must then find time later to go back and attempt to practice these skills without any support. I appreciated the time to work through several of the circuits and then the challenges to change the code and modify.

“I have shown the kit to dozens of people and will take it out on the weekend or evenings and play with the components. I am currently trying to create several of the circuits with my 10 year old daughter and she thinks it is the coolest thing ever. Thanks so much for providing me with a kit and removing another hurdle to my exploration of coding. I am a novice at coding and the freedom to get it out and explore in my free time is huge.

“I am so grateful that you made a stop in Kansas City on your tour and I hope to someday have another opportunity to attend one of your workshops. Thanks for being teacher friendly and truly being about sharing what you know and helping education.”

From SparkFun Electronics

“Respondents rated the overall tour stop experience very highly. The overwhelming majority (85%) indicated the stop was either ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ (52 out of 61 respondents gave it a ‘9’ or ‘10’).”

-SparkFun Electronics Marketing, workshops analytics

“My name is Nathan Seidle and I am Chief Executive Officer of SparkFun Electronics, an online electronics retailer. This letter is to recommend Linz Craig for his work and knowledge demonstrated while working at SparkFun for 3 years. I worked with Linz on a regular basis on various educational outreach projects as well as engineering product design and testing.

“Throughout his time at SparkFun Linz pushed himself to learn new skills including PCB layout and technical writing. Linz regularly offered new ideas that could be turned into products by the engineering staff. His work creating the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit binder was exemplary.

“Linz is a skilled, highly creative person who has an eye for what will and will not work in a classroom setting. His teaching style and class material set a high level of quality for what would become the department of education in 2011.

“Linz is respectful, trustworthy and will bend over backwards to see that the job gets done correctly. He is a caring person who made many good friends at SparkFun including myself. He will be missed.”

– Nathan Seidle, CEO and Founder of SparkFun Electronics

“Linz Craig was the first member of the Department of Education at SparkFun Electronics and helped to create much of the foundation upon which the highly successful organization was built. Since its inception the department has performed outreach and professional development across all levels of informal and formal education. The educational materials have both national and international reach with adoption in countries spanning multiple continents. Linz developed a variety of the open source curricula offered through SparkFun Electronics that is showcased both in the resources available on the website as well as through outreach performed at a variety of national conferences and events (e.g., USASEF, TEI, NSTA, CSEF, NSBA, ISTE, CACTE). In addition to participating in these events, Linz was a lead coordinator and instructor for the 2013 SparkFun Electronics National Education Tour. This project was an impressive undertaking that required attention to detail, stamina and passion to bring exceptional hands­ on outreach to students and educators across much of this vast country.

“Over the course of Linz’s tenure in the department he also collaborated with the engineering department on the creation and enhancement of products. These projects include Logic Blocks, the Simon Says product line and the Lab Pack series. Linz developed a host of workshop materials surrounding Arduino, Processing, Scratch, etextiles and various other educational technologies. A key component to the department’s success is the outreach performed to introduce people to the technology that the open source community creates. Linz has an extensive history of workshops and events at educational institutes (e.g., New York University, Tufts University, University of Colorado, Colorado State University, M.I.T., Tufts University, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Stetson University, University of Arkansas, East Carolina University, University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College) as well as K­12 schools and informal learning centers such as libraries and museums (e.g., Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Science Museum Oklahoma Network, Arkansas Museum of Discovery, Science Museum of Minnesota, Union Station Science City, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art).

“As the first employee in the newly formed department, Linz played a critical role in training and customer service. Much of the work the department performs is built upon creating relationships with educators and Linz’s passion for education and technology proved invaluable in forming strong relationships with educators throughout the US and beyond. These relationships ultimately led to the network of educators who depend on SparkFun Electronics for professional development and exposure to new and exciting classroom technologies.”